''The Man from the USSR and Other Plays'' is a collection of four

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...

s by the

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

n writer

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...

, first published in 1984. The plays were collected and

translated Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

from the original

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by Nabokov's son,

Dmitri Nabokov Dmitri Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: Дми́трий Влади́мирович Набо́ков; May 10, 1934February 22, 2012) was an American opera singer and translator. Born in Berlin, he was the only child of Russian parents: author Vlad ...

after his father's death. The volume consists of the plays 'The Pole' ('Polyus', written 1923), 'The Man from the USSR' ('Chelovek iz SSSR', written 1926), 'The Event' ('Sobytie', written 1938) and 'The Granddad' ('Dedushka').

The Plays

'The Pole'

'The Pole' is a one-act play in

blank verse Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and Pa ...

. It was written in 1923, when Nabokov was working as a farm labourer in France, and was first published August 14 and 16 in '' Rul''' (''The Rudder''), a Russian newspaper of which Nabokov's father had become editor in 1920. It was a response to Scott's diaries, which Nabokov had seen in the

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some years earlier. It depicts the deaths of last four members of Scott's crew, on their 1911/1912 expedition to the

South Pole The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole, Terrestrial South Pole or 90th Parallel South, is one of the two points where Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on Earth and lies antipod ...

. Dmitri Nabokov described them, in the collection, as a 'deliberately free synthesis ..not a journalistic reproduction'. The first production of 'The Pole' was probably in 1996, directed by Klaus Michael Grüber. It opened on September 28, 1996, at the Berlin

Schaubühne The Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz (Theatre on Lehniner Square) is a famous theatre in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin, located on the Kurfürstendamm boulevard. It is a conversion of the ''Universum'' cinema, built according to plans designe ...

, and was followed by 20 performances in October. It was performed in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

, translated by German playwright Botho Strauß.

'The Man from the USSR'

'The Man from the USSR' was first produced in Berlin in 1926, and the first act was published in ''Rul on January 1 the following year.

'The Event'

'The Event' was written in

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in 1938, and was published in ''Russkie zapiskie'' (''Russian Annuls''). The plot follows a painter in tsarist Russia and his wife as they await a convict who has threatened them with violence.

'The Granddad'

'The Granddad' is a one-act verse play, which was first published in ''Rul in October 1924. According to Kanfer's review in

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, 'Because of the melodramatic structure and blank-verse dialogue, the play is the least successful.'

Reception

The response to this collection has been small compared to the general response to Nabokov's work, due in part to the small proportion of his

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...

that drama represents.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Man from the USSR and Other Plays, The Works by Vladimir Nabokov Russian plays Books of plays 1984 books